Dare I Ask You
by LadyTerminal
Summary: What did happen to Tom Riddle after the diary was destroyed? Can memories really die?
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I Do Not own any of the characters. but the plotline. yeah that silly plotline is mine

For the past three months of summer Harry Potter had been plagued by a presence. Whenever he payed close enough attention, he could feel that someone was always there; and the aloneness he always felt went away.

At first, Harry had been very frightened. He was paranoid, and found himself unable to sleep. But after a while, the boy noticed that Dudley had stopped bullying him, and his Aunt and Uncle didn't even yell at him when he left their bacon on the stove-top for a few seconds too long. And one night, when Harry had stayed out a few hours extra to test their patience; they didn't even acknowledge him as he walked in the door at 10pm. He felt protected somehow, and eventually forgot the presence was even there.

That is, until the dreams started up. They were always the same, but each lengthened slowly finishing a story.

He was back in the Chamber of Secrets. The whole place looked reborn. The marble, once covered in grime and water, was shining like a ballroom floor. There were burning torches on the walls, and all of the many statues that lined the walkway bore no chips or imperfections.

The place was truly amazing, but Harry felt uncomfortable. The chamber brought back horrible memories fresh to his mind. A chill swept through his body as he took his first step...then another...

...and another.

He walked briskly forward. His heart racing.

Soon he approached the face of Salazar Slytherin. The statue's mouth agape, he could see an empty hallway through the opening. Harry could tell there were rooms branching off from the sides, and the place looked about as welcoming as the chamber with it's sparkling marble and warm light. A set of stairs began to drip down from the Founder's mouth. Harry made a daring choice, and he stepped carefully upon the first stair. When he was sure that he trusted them to hold steady, he began to ascend. Though there was no way the could be a wind, Harry felt a soft breeze caressing him. Almost playfully, the breeze mussed his hair, and nudged him up the stairs

As soon as he reached the opening, the breeze rushed past him. It was as though someone was hurrying by him, and Harry felt it was familiar, though he could not place the feeling.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I Do Not own any of the characters. but the plotline. yeah that silly plotline is mine

Harry didn't feel like he should have felt after he woke. Where was the blinding fear and gasping breaths that usually followed a nightmare? For three months he waited always waking before he reached the top of the stairs.

It was a change for the better from the haunting dreams. Sirius slipping into the veil, and Wormtail calling out Cedric's death. And Harry wondered why he had been dreaming of the Chamber of Secrets at all. Somehow it felt as though the place held some unfinished business.

Harry started about his day as normal. He climbed out of his bed and changed into a pair of jeans that clung to his nicely shaped hips. Living with the Dursley's, he could gain a bit more weight but all-in-all, Quidditch during the school year kept Harry in good form.

He sauntered across the hall, over to the bathroom to take a quick shower. Harry noted that the whole of the house was still in a sleep induced stupor. He quietly opened the bathroom door. As soon as he entered the room he felt strange. It was very very warm inside. Though no one would have been in the room recently.

Harry started the water, stripped his jeans off, and began brushing his teeth while waiting for the water to heat up. Standing in front of the mirror he scrubbed at his teeth. He thoughtfully tried to place the weird feeling the bathroom had. It reminded him of the dream last night. The feeling he had gotten when the breeze rushed past him on the stairs. And with a jolt he placed the two feelings in his mind.

The presence! Harry definitely felt something around him like he always did, but it was so much stronger. Harry shuddered a sickly feeling settled in his gut as the sensations around him swelled. He distinctly felt arms now. Wrapping around his thin waist and it frightened him completely. Harry closed his eyes and tried to even his breath. The shower water had heated up enough and Harry placed his toothbrush on the counter. Carefully he stepped past the curtains and into the rush of hot water. He stressed himself to concentrate on the soothing feeling he got from the water hitting his back, but he felt as though someone were running their fingers across his chest in lazy circles. _"Oh god." _Harry breathed. His stomach tightened and he closed his eyes. That felt too good, and his body was reacting the way any teenage boy's would have. Harry's mind was reeling. He needed to get out of there. He scrubbed shampoo into his hair as fast as he could. There were definitely an extra pair of hands ghosting around his abdomen the entire time. And as he ran the soapy washcloth over himself quickly he could have sworn he heard a chuckle.

After the horrible shower, the feeling stayed with him all day. While he was making breakfast, he would put something down and when he turned around to pick it up it wouldn't be where he left it. The spatula ended up in the left cupboard three times, and Harry had never even been in there in the first place. Something was definitely going on.

When Harry went out to weed the ratty garden in the front of the house, that mischievous someone hummed nursery tunes in his ear. It was definitely a boy, and it was a voice he had heard he before somewhere once a long time ago.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I Do Not own any of the characters. but the plotline. yeah that silly plotline is mine

Harry couldn't wait to get to sleep that night. He had a feeling questions would be answered finally. And everything was the same at first. He walked slowly across the Chamber floor and climbed the stairs - and when he reached the top he heard a voice humming nursery tunes and the presence flew past him, and for the first time, Harry didn't wake up. So he took a daring step forward.

All of the rooms in the strange hall appeared deserted. The held nothing; even furniture was curiously absent.

So when Harry reached the last room of the several, he didn't expect anything, but as the wandering teen approached the door, he noticed that it was slightly ajar.

Harry took a deep breath, and cautiously he nudged the door the rest of the way open.

Nothing happened, and slowly Harry peered around the door. His breath held painfully in his chest and his heart contracted wildly.

Casually sitting in an armchair warming by a crackling fireplace was Tom Marvolo Riddle. His dark black hair curled around his right ear neatly, and a knowing smirk caressed his lips dangerously.

The man quirked his eyebrow expectantly, and nodded at the second armchair in front of him.

All the hairs on Harry's arm prickled on end. This was so eerie; but non-the-less, he slowly walked to the armchair and tensely eased down into it. At least it was comfortable with the fires warmth seeping into his shins. Tom magicked a glass from midair and pulled a bottle of red wine off the small chess table in front of them. Slowly he uncorked it, and began to fill the glass.

Harry felt hypnotized as he watched Tom. There was a strange inhuman calm about him. He watched Tom slip a small vial out of his robe pocket delicately. _"I know I haven't really been an err...trustworthy person...I give you my word this is calming draught."_ and Tom carefully poured the contents of the vial into the blood-red wine. He held the glass out to Harry, and shaking slightly the boy reached out his lanky arm. He wrapped his fingers around the swell of the glass, and lifted it from the other boy's grip.

But did Tom Riddle actually expect Harry to spare him an inkling of trust? A spark of hot anger played one of the boy's heartstrings. This was the man who had murdered his parents. He had brought his pain and death, and torturous amounts of fear. How many nights had Harry awoken to the sound of Cedric Diggory's screams. Haunted by visions of Sirius, the only one who had ever truly cared for Harry. As a parent, as a friend. How could Tom...no Voldemort, sit there, his lovely face pulled into slight worry as Harry's eyebrows twisted down in anger.

"_You know."_ Tom mused pointedly. _"I am in __**your**__ dreams. I'm obviously here for a reason. If I wanted to harm you boy I would have done so already easily."_

Tom reached out one of his long slender arms, and softly he brushed his thumb against Harry's forehead. Running along the boys scar, almost admiringly.

"_Does it burn Harry?" _Riddle asked slowly. Harry was slightly shocked. The violent pain the boy always felt was replaced by a bubbly feeling in the pits of his stomach; as if his gut were doing summersaults. He quickly dodged out of the other boy's touch. What was that?

"_It doesn't hurt does it?"_ Tom questioned worriedly,"_That's all I could ever want for you... No more pain."_ Harry's eyes quickly snapped up to Tom's. Sincerity and worry were written in the man's eyes. The disgust that twisted in Harry's face faltered.

Doubt was nagging in the back of the boy's mind. What did this all mean? There was no way Tom wasn't trying to trick him again.

"Tom Riddle," Were the first words he uttered. _"Why do you come to meet me in my dreams every night? You offer me calming draught and honesty. And I swear that you've been following me around the entire summer."_ Harry shook his head towards the glass he held in his hand. _"What do you want with me? Have you not burdened me enough. Now even in the deepest most innocent pits of my mind you come to take even my sanity?"_

Did he even know that when Harry wasn't having these curious dreams he was sitting trapped in his room alone all day pouring over what in the world these dreams could mean? Of course he did because subconsciously, Harry knew he was there, the entire time. With full, and complete access to his mind.-and Harry was afraid again.

"_No boy, I am not Lord Voldemort." _Tom muttered, his voice full of unidentifiable emotion. _"You thought you killed me."_Harry watched the man sit up straighter. _"When I separated a piece of my soul into that diary I gave that piece a different entity._

_I am the entity. __**I **__am not Lord Voldemort. I am Tom Riddle...The memory of Tom Riddle; Seventeen year old, head boy, ambitious student._

_"When you destroyed my diary Harry you thought you had killed me, but you can't __**kill**__ a memory Harry." _Tom continued solemnly. _"When you destroyed my diary, I had nowhere to latch myself to. The diary was a solid place to tether myself to. It allowed me corporeal form. But without it I had no form._

_"I did the only thing I could do. If I was to keep existing I would have to tether again. But Quickly I was losing myself. I felt around and only one thing would accept my magical signature." _Tom looked intently at Harry-as if trying to nonverbally make him understand. _"I tethered myself to you."_


	4. Chapter 4

Tom sat in the felted armchair and soaked up the words in the room. He could not even begin to explain to the boy in front of him anything that he needed to say. _"Would you please drink? I have a lot to share and this conversation will be very productive if both of us are calm." _Tom patiently requested.

Reluctantly, Harry cast an uneasy glance down towards the diluted potion, and was slightly startled when suddenly the glass disappeared from his hand. Tom heaved a dramatic sigh and Harry looked up to see the he was holding the glass.

Tom nodded curtly to Harry and smoothly raised the wine to his lips and took a small sip. _"It's very expensive wine you know." _The man commented passively and he placed the glass on the table in Harry's reach. _"I promised I wouldn't harm you. Now will you spare me the disrespect."_

Harry ignored the man's gripe and he reached out and grabbed the potion from off the chess table. "So Tom," Harry raised the potion to his boyish lips. "You're telling me that you've been stuck following me around for the last four years?" and he took and small taste of the liquid onto his tongue, Letting the tart flavor of the wine settle onto his taste-buds.

Immediately as he swallowed, a warm feeling swelled in the depths of his stomach. The tinge of annoyance he felt seemed to vanish as the warm feeling spread slowly until it reached his fingertips; and for a moment, all of the hairs on his arm stood on end.

_ "I used to despise you." _Tom sighed._ "I used to spend every waking moment plotting my revenge." _Harry took another sip of the potion. Letting the wine settle on his taste buds; feeling the nerves in his brain settle as well. "_I was going to kill you as soon as I figured out how; and I would have made it slow and incredibly painful._

_ "I couldn't talk, couldn't touch anything." _The older boy divulged as he dropped his gaze to the floor_. "Could you imagine how I got through the first two years feeling like that? I could do nothing except feel my rage as it slowly ate me up."_

Harry could imagine. He knew how it felt to not be listened to. To feel like the only person you really had in the world was yourself; and to be angry all the time with no release.

But Tom was in absolute solitude. At least Harry could go to school where he had Ron and Hermione to talk to, despite the fact that they had become immensely unbearable.

Tom went on, "_Gradually my schemes became halfhearted. I began to notice that for all of the planning I did I wasn't getting anywhere fast, and I gave in. This was around the second half of your fourth year. After that Chang girl caught your attention. You never stopped thinking about her. All I could hear in your head was 'Cho Chang won't like me,' and 'She's going to the Yule Ball with that Diggory boy.'" _Tom had a smirk on again. He looked at the younger wizard as if he were teasing him; and it was bothering Harry terribly

"_You've grown so much since then."_ Tom admitted; his taunting smirk turning into a small proud smile. "_Even through all that you've been forced into, you are still just Harry."_

"_Because when I finally just watched you. Really started paying attention, you do some strange things Harry Potter."_

Tom chuckled softly to himself. _"When your friends are fighting, the problems are so meager compared to your own. Yet somehow...this never seems to phase you as you help them break through it no matter how long it takes."_

_ "I finally saw that you aren't an annoying, attention-seeking, pity-loving, angst filled teenager with a stick up his arse. I finally saw you, Harry. A selfless loving and attentive boy being manipulated, used, and bombarded with unwanted attention."_

Harry strangely felt even at the biting words which fell so easily out of the other boy's mouth. He chalked it down to calming draught. Which was probably in the wine Riddle had insisted that he had drunk.

_"It was at the time when you found your godfather and saved his life."_ Tom saw the bittersweet happiness shining in Harry's eyes at the memory of Sirius. _"I was rooting for you, though in my head I was still in denial of my developing admiration."_ Tom continued, _"I constantly plotted my rebirth and vengeance for another year, though it was never wholeheartedly." _

"_Then the following year, you witnessed my rebirth, Harry. No..."_ The man shook his head sadly. _"You witnessed Voldemort's rebirth. I saw him for the first time that night. Before that moment he was a hero in my mind. He was everything I had dreamed for myself. Little did I understand what Voldemort really meant for the world. It was a foreign concept to me."_ Tom's fists clenched and he ground his words out through his teeth. "Voldemort is evil, and you, Harry are brave."

_I began to consciously root for you. I knew you were just like me in some ways except for one."_ Harry looked into Tom's eyes. He had been fighting his similarities with the man his whole life, but maybe he was fighting against Voldemort. Tom sat in front of him now with a spark in his eye that he recognized very deeply. Harry had seen that glint is his own eyes, he had felt it screaming in his heart. It was the urge to protect. How strange that Tom Riddle somehow looked at him with a burning to protect.

The man continued, _"There was one huge difference between you and I. It put a wall between I and everyone else. You found a way to love people, Harry. Unbiased and honest love despite your own hardships. I want to learn."_


End file.
